• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.604-609
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• 2009

To investigate the potential use of microbial heme as an iron source, recombinant Escherichia coli coexpressing ALA synthase (HemA) as well as the NADP-dependent malic enzyme (MaeB) and dicarboxylic acid transporter (DctA) were cultured. The typical red pigment extracted from the recombinant E. coli after 38 h showed highest absorbance at 407 nm, and the amount of iron in 38.4 mg of microbial heme extract derived from 6-1 fermentation broth was 4.1 mg. To determine the commercial potential of the recombinant E.coli-synthesized iron-associated heme as an iron source, mice were fed the iron-free provender with the microbial heme extract. The average body weight reduction of mice fed non-iron provender was 2.3%, whereas no detectable weight loss was evident in mice fed microbial heme addition after 15 days. The heme content of the blood from microbial heme fed mice was 4.2 mg/ml whereas that of controls was 2.4 mg/ml, which implies that the microbial heme could be available for use as an animal iron source.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.194-202
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• 2021

BACKGROUND: Towards achievement of sustainable agriculture, using microbial inoculants may present promising alternatives without adverse environmental effects; however, there are challenging issues that should be addressed in terms of effectiveness and ecology. Viability and stability of the bacterial inoculants would be one of the major issues in effectiveness of microbial pesticide uses, and the changes within the indigenous microbial communities by the inoculants would be an important factor influencing soil ecology. Here we investigated the stability of the introduced bacterial strains in the soils planted with barley and its effect on the diversity shifts of the rhizosphere soil bacteria. METHODS AND RESULTS: Two different types of bacterial strains of Bacillus thuringiensis and Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 were inoculated to the soils planted with barley. To monitor the stability of the inoculated bacterial strains, genes specific to the strains (XRE and mtrA) were quantified by qPCR. In addition, bacterial community analyses were performed using v3-v4 regions of 16S rRNA gene sequences from the barley rhizosphere soils, which were analyzed using Illumina MiSeq system and Mothur. Alpha- and beta-diversity analyses indicated that the inoculated rhizosphere soils were grouped apart from the uninoculated soil, and plant growth also may have affected the soil bacterial diversity. CONCLUSION: Regardless of the survival of the introduced non-native microbes, non-indigenous bacteria may influence the soil microbial community and diversity.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.740-746
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• 2021

Efficient cellulolytic enzyme production is important for the development of lignocellulose-degrading enzyme mixtures. However, purification of cellulases from their native hosts is time- and labor-consuming. In this study, a constitutive expression system was developed in Penicillium oxalicum for the secreted production of proteins. Using a constitutive polyubiquitin gene promoter and cultivating with glucose as the sole carbon source, nine cellulolytic enzymes of different origins with relatively high purity were produced within 48 h. When supplemented to a commercial cellulase preparation, cellobiohydrolase I from P. funiculosum and cellobiohydrolase II from Talaromyces verruculosus showed remarkable enhancing effects on the hydrolysis of steam-exploded corn stover. Additionally, a synergistic effect was observed for these two cellobiohydrolases during the hydrolysis. Taken together, the constitutive expression system provides a convenient tool for the production of cellulolytic enzymes, which is expected to be useful in the development of highly efficient lignocellulose-degrading enzyme mixtures.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.375-381
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• 2000

Quantifying the changes of soil microbial biomass and activity of enzymes are important to understand the dynamics of active soil C and N pools. The dynamics of soil microbial biomass C and N and the activity of enzymes over entire growth period of soybean-(Glycine max (L) Merr.)-wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) sequence on a Typic Haplustert as influenced by organic manure and inorganic fertilizer N were investigated in a field experiment. The application of farmyard manure at 4 to 16 $Mg{\cdot}ha^{-1}\;y^{-1}r^{-1}$ along with fertilizer nitrogen at 50 or 180 $kg{\cdot}ha^{-1}$ increased the mean soil microbial biomass from 1.12 to 2.05 fold over unmanured soils under soybean-wheat system. Irrespective of organic and chemical fertilizer N application, the soil microbial biomass was maximum during the first two months at active growing stage of the crops and subsequently declined with crop maturity. The mean annual microbial activity was significantly increased when manure and chemical fertilizer at 8 $Mg{\cdot}ha^{-1}$ and 50/180 N $kg{\cdot}ha^{-1}$, respectively were applied. The C turnover rate decreased by 47 to 72 % when the level of farmyard manure was increased from 4 to 8 and 16 $Mg{\cdot}ha^{-1}$. There were significant correlations between biomass C, available N, dehydrogenase, phosphatase and yield of the crops.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.65 no.1
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• pp.63-74
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• 2022

Microbial dysbiosis in the gut is associated with human diseases, and variations in mucus alter gut microbiota. Therefore, we explored the effects of mucin on the gut microbiota using a community of 19 synthetic gut microbial species. Cultivation of these species in modified Gifu anaerobic medium (GAM) supplemented with mucin before synthetic community assembly facilitated substantial growth of the Bacteroides, Akkermansia, and Clostridium genera. The results of 16S rRNA microbial relative abundance profiling revealed more of the beneficial microbes Collinsella, Bifidobacterium, Ruminococcus, and Lactobacillus. This increased acetate levels in the community cultivated with, rather than without (control), mucin. We identified differences in predicted cell function and metabolism between microbes cultivated in GAM with and without mucin. Mucin not only changed the composition of the gut microbial community, but also modulated metabolic functions, indicating that it could help to modulate microbial changes associated with human diseases.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.760-770
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• 2023

Continuous cropping obstacles have become a serious factor restricting sustainable development in modern agriculture, while companion planting is one of the most common and effective methods for solving this problem. Here, we monitored the effects of companion planting on soil fertility and the microbial community distribution pattern in pepper monoculture and companion plantings. Soil microbial communities were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing technology. Companion plants included garlic (T1), oat (T2), cabbage (T3), celery (T4), and white clover (T5). The results showed that compared with the monoculture system, companion planting significantly increased the activities of soil urease (except for T5) and sucrase, but decreased catalase activity. In addition, T2 significantly improved microbial diversity (Shannon index) while T1 resulted in a decrease of bacterial OTUs and an increase of fungal OTUs. Companion planting also significantly changed soil microbial community structures and compositions. Correlation analysis showed that soil enzyme activities were closely correlated with bacterial and fungal community structures. Moreover, the companion system weakened the complexity of microbial networks. These findings indicated that companion plants can provide nutrition to microbes and weaken the competition among them, which offers a theoretical basis and data for further research into methods for reducing continuous cropping obstacles in agriculture.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.565-573
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• 2023

In light of the complex interactions between the host animal and its resident gut microbiomes, studies of these microbial communities as a means to improve cattle production are important. This study was conducted to analyze the intestinal microorganisms of Holstein (HT) and Jersey (JS), raised in Korea and to clarify the differences in microbial structures according to cattle species through next-generation sequencing. The alpha-diversity analysis revealed that most species richness and diversity indices were significantly higher in JS than in HT whereas phylogenetic diversity, which is the sum of taxonomic distances, is not significant. Microbial composition analysis showed that the intestinal microbial community structure of the two groups differed. In the both groups, a significant correlation was observed among the distribution of several microbes at the family level. In particular, a highly significant correlation (p<0.0001) among a variety of microbial distributions was found in JS. Beta-diversity analyis was to performed to statistically verify whether a difference exists in the intestinal microbial community structure of the two groups. Principal coordinate analysis and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) clustering analysis showed separation between the HT and JS clusters. Meanwhile, permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) revealed that their microbial structures are significantly different (p<0.0001). LEfSe biomarker analysis was performed to discover the differenc microbial features between the two groups. We found that several microbes, such as Firmicutes, Bacilli, Moraxellaceae and Pseudomonadales account for most of the difference in intestinal microbial community structure between the two groups.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.30-38
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• 2012

We investigated the effects on soil microbial diversity and the growth promotion of red pepper resulting from inoculation with a microbial agent composed of Bacillus subtilis AH18, B. licheniformis K11 and Pseudomonas fluorescens 2112 in a red pepper farming field. Photosynthetic bacteria, Trichoderma spp., Azotobacter spp., Actinomycetes, nitrate oxidizing bacteria, nitrite oxidizing bacteria, nitrogen fixing bacteria, denitrifying bacteria, phosphate solubilizing bacteria, cellulase producing bacteria, and urease producing bacteria are all indicator microbes of healthy soil microbial diversity. The microbial diversity of the consortium microbial agent treated soil was seen to be 1.1 to 14 times greater than soils where other commercial agent treatments were used, the latter being the commercial agent AC-1, and chemical fertilizer. The yield of red pepper in the field with the treated consortium microbial agent was increased by more than 15% when compared to the other treatments. Overall, the microbial diversity of the red pepper farming field soil was improved by the consortium microbial agent, and the promotion of growth and subsequent yield of red pepper was higher than soils where the other treatments were utilized.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.25-33
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• 2023

The fermentation process of kimchi, which is a traditional Korean food, influences the resulting compo- sition of microorganisms, such as the genera Leuconostoc, Weissella, and Lactobacillus. In addition, several factors, including the type of kimchi, fermentation conditions, materials, and ingredients, can influence the distribution of the kimchi microbial community. In this study, next-generation sequencing (NGS) of kimchi samples obtained from central (Gangwon-do and Gyeonggi-do) and southern (Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do) regions in Korea was performed, and the microbial communities in samples from the two regions were compared. Good's coverage prediction for all samples was higher than 99%, indicating that there was sufficient reliability for comparative analysis. However, in a α -diversity analysis, there was no significant difference in species richness and diversity between samples. The Firmicutes phylum was common in both regions. At the species level, Weissella kandleri dominated in central (46.5%) and southern (30.8%) regions. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis was performed to identify biomarkers representing the microbial community in each region. The LEfSe results pointed to statistically significant differences between the two regions in community composition, with Leuconostocaceae (71.4%) dominating in the central region and Lactobacillaceae (61.0%) dominating in the southern region. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the microbial communities of kimchi are significantly influenced by regional properties and that it can provide more useful scientific data to study the relationship between regional characteristics of kimchi and their microbial distribution.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.325-333
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• 2023

This study compared and analyzed the microbial composition and physicochemical characteristics of kimchi (gimjang kimchi) and mukeunji (aged kimchi). Commercial kimchi and mukeunji products were purchased through an online market. After an analysis of physicochemical characteristics, the pH of the mukeunji samples was found to be lower and the acidity higher than in the kimchi samples. There was no significant difference in salinity between kimchi and mukeunji, but the sugar content was higher in the kimchi samples. The phylogenetic diversity index, which incorporates phylogenetic difference between species, was significantly higher in mukeunji than in the kimchi. The most dominant order in both groups was Lactobacillales, but several lactic acid bacteria, such as the Pediococcus and Lactobacillus species, which may be more acid tolerant or more competitive, are relatively predominant in mukeunji. Beta set-significance analysis based on two different distance metric results revealed that microbial distributions of population were different at the statistical confidence level (p<0.001). We investigated the effect of respective species on total microbial community using the LEfSe (linear discriminant analysis effect size) mechanism. According to the results of LEfSe testing, a relatively higher abundance of Weissella kandleri in kimchi and a higher abundance of Pediococcus inopinatus in mukeunji have the greatest influence on the differences in microbial structure between the two groups.